Cherrypicker | Literature  Post-war things

In an anthology, the participating artists are inspired by objects and tell of the time after the Second World War in short comic stories.

Werner Abresch (1941-2024), long-serving pastor in Wesel, was a passionate collector. Since the 1980s, he had been gathering unique historical objects that tell stories about their former owners. After the Second World War, many items were upcycled in unusual ways: a swastika flag became an apron, a crashed American bomber was turned into a dental drill, an artillery shell served as a vase, and a Wehrmacht helmet was repurposed as a kitchen sieve. When comic artist Tobi Dahmen read about the Abresch Collection - acquired in 2021 by the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte Nordrhein-Westfalen (Foundation of House of History of North Rhine-Westphalia) - he immediately saw the potential: the stories behind these everyday objects could be wonderfully told in comic form. He brought five other comic artists on board for the project, which has now been published as a book under the title Stell dir vor! (Imagine That!): Julia Bernhard, Melanie Garanin, Mikael Ross, Volker Schmitt, and Julia Zejn.

Tobi Dahmen contributed two comics about Werner Abresch’s life, which frame the other stories. Julia Bernhard and Volker Schmitt tell the story of a former Wehrmacht soldier who was a tailor by trade and transformed the silk from the parachute that saved his life after his plane was shot down into a wedding dress. Bernhard and Schmitt used classic comic panels to bring this tale to life. Julia Zejn’s comic story “Kartoffeldiebe” (Potato Thieves) explores the significance of a “hoarding bicycle.” After the war, food was scarce, and it was common for people to ride out to the fields to steal potatoes. During these “hoarding trips,” a bicycle was a vital tool for transporting the loot. Zejn illustrated the story in a style that is almost naïve at times, yet also highly expressive.

About silence and losses

Melanie Garanin’s watercoloured ink drawings are playful and sketch-like, appealing to children. In her story, a boy finds a pot made from the metal of a melted-down aircraft and proudly brings it home. But when he and his sister bombard their mother with questions about the pot’s origins and the war, the mood shifts - revealing how the adults were unable to speak to the next generation about the war and the Nazi past.

Finally, Mikael Ross tells the dramatic story of Willy Hild in single-page, black-and-white, minimalist illustrations. Hild, a musician with the Frankfurt Symphony Orchestra, was denounced at the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship for refusing to give the Hitler salute. In the years that followed, he came to the attention of the authorities several times due to health issues stemming from a First World War injury. As a Jehovah’s Witness who actively preached, he was taken into “protective custody” in 1938 and deported by the Gestapo to Buchenwald concentration camp. Despite repeated torture, he remained steadfast in his religious beliefs and stayed in the camp until its liberation on 11 April 1945. During that time, he played music for fellow inmates on a bandoneon, an instrument that is also part of the Abresch Collection. His wife never saw him again: “She died young, a death brought on by the persecution of both her and my father,” wrote their daughter Elsa.

Appropriation of history as a subjective act

This comic anthology offers a different, associative approach to history through its lifelike subjects and the vivid, diverse artistic styles of its contributors. Unlike academic texts, much is left open or merely hinted at. Comics do not claim that this is exactly how it was, but are an ‘appropriation of history’ as a subjective act, as it says in the foreword.  
 

July 2025